Elliot stared blankly at everything before him.
The vortex pulsed slowly in the air, as though it were breathing.
Elliot's spirituality trembled faintly, as though thousands of steel needles lay ahead, ready to pierce him at the slightest movement.
Malice. Pure malice. With a single glance, Elliot knew that the things beneath the Throne were absolutely evil.
Since the founding of the Hoffenwall Empire, these things had been suppressed beneath the Throne. No one remembered what sort of beings they were, and people had gradually forgotten them.
Only now, as he looked at the terrifying beings above, did the fear buried deep in his heart surface again.
Elliot pressed his palm to his chest, carefully sensing his spirituality.
His spirituality had been warning him all along. That strange, oppressive feeling had never left him since he entered the Imperial Capital.
Only now did he realize that the feeling came from underground-from beneath the entire Imperial Capital!
Elliot felt as though he were standing not in the Imperial Capital, but atop an enormous barrel of oil. The slightest spark would set everything ablaze!
"How... did this happen...?"
An incredulous murmur suddenly came from beside him. Elliot turned to see Victoria staring blankly ahead-or, more precisely, at the Crown atop that rotten flesh.
"Thorne..."
Victoria walked toward the Crown, step by step.
"Victoria!"
Sidney called out to her, but Victoria seemed not to hear him and continued forward, one step at a time.
Her shoes trod over the debris-strewn ruins, her footing uneven, until she reached the rotten flesh.
The great mass of rotten flesh slowly squirmed. Disgusting pus seeped out, and countless mosquitoes and flies rose in a buzzing swarm.
The mosquitoes and flies flew toward Victoria. The phantom image of a spiderweb appeared around her, and the insects scattered with